'In many ways, I was an independent woman,' writes Alice Steinbach, single working mother and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. 'For years I'd made my own choices, paid my own bills, shovelled my own snow, and had relationships that allowed for a lot of freedom on both sides.'

Slowly, however, she saw that she had become quite dependent in another way. 'I had fallen into the habit of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me.' Who am I, she wanted to know, away from the things that define me - my family, children, job, friends?

Steinbach searches for the answer in some of the most exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soulmate in a Japanese man; Oxford, where she learns more from a ballroom dancing lesson than any of her studies; Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. Beautifully illustrated with postcards Steinbach wrote home to herself, this is an unforgettable voyage of discovery.